That Worcester movie

We’ve been claiming “American Hustle” as our own since director David O. Russell brought his good friends Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence to town in April, commandeered Main Street, Union Station and Nick’s Bar and Restaurant, and made a movie. Yes, we’ll overlook Russell’s left-handed compliment that Worcester is a “gold mine” for period filmmaking because so much of the city appears frozen in the ’70s, and just say “Thank you” for including a shot of the Midtown Mall in the final cut.

“American Hustle” is a twisty, delightfully unkempt picture loosely based on the ABSCAM corruption sting of the late 1970s/early 1980s in which FBI agents, posing as Arab sheikhs, bribed members of Congress in return for political favors. Russell isn’t concerned with the details (the film opens with the disclaimer “Some of this actually happened”); the ABSCAM stuff is simply a framing device for his four leads to conduct a master’s acting class for lesser mortals as they craft characters of polluted ethics and confused motivations inside a culture that doesn’t give a shit how the bottom line is achieved so long as somebody else gets hurt.

Christian Bale opens the movie standing in front of a mirror (the perfect setting for a member of the Me Generation) painstakingly adjusting a comb-over so audacious that it’s practically a piece of modern art — with a protruding belly and that swirly mane, Bale is as unrecognizable playing small-time conman Irving Rosenfeld as he was inside the bat suit. Irving and his mistress, Sydney (Amy Adams), have been coerced by manic FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper, wearing a tighter perm than a French poodle) into aiding the feds’ efforts to entrap the squeaky-clean mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner, very good here), in a pay-for-play scheme to bring casinos to Atlantic City.

The double-dealing, power-tripping, tough-guy posturing and an appropriately intimidating cameo by Robert De Niro, all played out to a vintage soundtrack, evokes Martin Scorsese’s “Good Fellas” crossed with a hint of “Casino.” Russell’s film is all about re-invention American style. Former stripper Sydney assumes a British accent to pull off her scams with Irving, who believes the ladder of success can be climbed by the guy who talks the best game. Richie is so hungry for public recognition he terrorizes his boss (Louis C.K.) into funding the elaborate ruse to nail the politicians and threatens Irving and Sydney to participate.

The wild card, and scene stealer, is Irving’s wife Rosalyn, played with typical unfiltered abandon by Lawrence, who can do no wrong these days. Rosalyn is blissfully agenda free; she just wants to get out of the house once in a while. When Irving reluctantly takes her to dinner with Carmine and his wife, Rosalyn promptly gets tipsy and insists everyone at the table take a whiff of her fingernail polish, whose scent she describes as a mix of flowers and garbage.

Russell piles on the backstory before getting to the actual sting operation, and there are times you wish he would, well, hustle things up. His actors are so talented you’re left waiting for the plot to catch up with them. When it eventually does, in the movie’s final third, “American Hustle” rewards the audience with gobs of sly humor and a surprise or two.

Of course, the Worcester watching will be a big draw for local audiences, and in that regard “American Hustle” is our own home movie. Part of the fun is picking out the locales where the scenes unfold and taking pride in our gold mine.